Removing online defamation first published before 2014

If the defamation was first published before the Defamation Act 2013 came into force, our strategy to facilitate the removal of the defamation from the internet will depend on whether or not you already have sufficient information about the whereabouts of the poster and on the location of the offending website.

Typically, the process of removing the defamation from the offending website will involve direct communication with the website host, the website operator or the website owner. 
If the identity or the full contact details of either the website operator or the owner of the website is concealed, we will carry out thorough investigations (on-line as well as off-line) aimed to link the defamatory website to an individual or organisation, with whom we will communicate and if necessary serve upon court orders.

In some cases, our page removal strategy will include obtaining appropriate court orders to compel those who hold identifying information about the poster, the web host or the owner of the website, to disclose to use all the relevant information that they hold. 
Legal proceedings to subpoena information could be relatively straight forward, particularly if we obtain the relevant court orders from the most competent court. For example, if we don't know who is the registered owner of a domain name that hosts the defamation, and the registrar of the domain name is say GoDaddy.com, we will subpoena the required information through a specific Court in Arizona USA because this is where GoDaddy.com is registered and where our USA lawyers are located.

Once we have obtained the identifying information we will communicate with the poster, the website operator or the website hosts and request that they remove the defamatory post from the offending website. 

It is important that a social media lawyer has at least good understanding of the culture, the law and motives of the publishers of the defamatory comments and that those are considered before firing off offensive and often counter-productive solicitor's letters.
Some website operators who are located outside the UK might be entitled to publish the defamation under their own local laws so issuing them with legal threads might backfire on our clients so experience and sensitivity is hugely important here.

When defamation was published on a website prior to the Defamation Act 2013, the website operator might not be able to rely on a 'safe harbour' defence which the Act provides. that says that they were merely publishers.

For this reason, our preferred strategy for removing defamatory comments published prior to 2014 will be to focus our initial communication on the website operator rather than the poster whenever possible. 
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7 steps to make your business compliant with social media laws.

Social media

Social media law is now touching on almost every aspect of business life. So far much of the conversation about social media and business has been about marketing and PR and little has been said about the implications of social media on internal business processes.

Many organisations are yet to revise their aging policies, outdated employment contracts and archaic privacy guidance to provide employees with clarity about their usage of social media.

There are 7 simple steps that you can take today to upgrade your organisation’s internal processes and to ensure compliance with social media laws:

Step 1: Amend the employee’s handbook to include your organisation’s vision and policies on the use of social media, outlining what employees can and cannot do both at home and at work. Consider for example the fact that in some cases personal tweets or blog posts by an employee, outside working hours, could still affect the reputation of your organisation and bring it into disrepute, or that you as an employer could be sued as a result of personal use of social media by an employee during working hours.

Step 2: Update employment contracts to provide you with the right to sanction an employee who brought the organisation into disrepute through social media.

Step 3: Create a clear copyright policy that addresses the use of images and videos on your company’s websites and blogs. Many people are not aware of the fact that you cannot just download images from the internet and make commercial use of them. Just because the material is online does not necessarily mean that it does not belong to anyone. Every time you place a copied image on your website, you open yourself up to major legal liabilities, to high legal costs and to embarrassment.

Step 4: Decide whether your employees should be allowed to represent your organisation through their personal social media. Consider that social media is made for people not for organisations and that in order to benefit from the marketing value of social media you need the personal engagement of your employees in it. On the other hand, if and when they leave you, your employees will take their personal contacts, friends and connections with them. Is this a risk worth taking? Perhaps, but this will be the subject of another post.

Step 5: Make sure that those who are in charge of Human Resources in your organisation are knowledgeable in the area of social media otherwise they will be less likely to identify issues or address them properly.

Step 6: Revise your organisation's privacy policies. With social media, employees might inadvertently share confidential information by a click of a button so you need to ensure that your policies give them sufficient guidance as to how to avoid making such mistakes. Compromising privacy could lead to serious legal issues.

Step 7: Pay attention to trading standards issues. You must not make promises that the product or service that you offer cannot deliver. Revise the organisation's website content and any “pay per click” or other internet advertising campaigns to ensure that the claims and offers made in the ads are truthful and accurate. Many organisations leave this task at the hands of their internet marketing people, who often are not familiar with or feel indifference about trading standard’s laws.

Follow these 7 simple steps and upgrade your business to become compliant with social media laws. Click here to read more advice about social media and businesses. 

5 essential steps to follow when dealing with online defamation

Online defamation

It is never easy to decide what steps to take when you have discovered that you are being defamed online. You search the web and find various PR, SEO and reputation management specialists who claim that they can help but which do you choose?

It is vital that you remain focused and act appropriately when dealing with internet defamation. You do not want to damage your reputation further nor do you want to draw more attention to the original defamation.

Here I have put together 5 easy and effective steps to help you in response to your online defamation issue:

1) Be proactive. Consider using blogs to try and push the defamatory web pages out of public view. You do not have to be a writing expert to begin writing about yourself or your company. Google enables people to set up free blogs and these can be quite effective in communicating your message and enhancing your online reputation. If you... read more on online defamation and the other steps on our new social media solicitor blog.